XIII. That the said Hastings, further to persuade the Court of Directors to involve themselves in the affairs of the Mogul, and to reconcile this measure with his former conduct and declared opinions, did write to them to the following effect: That "at that former period to which the ancient policy with regard to the Mogul applied, the king's authority was sufficiently respected" (which he knew not to be true,--having himself declared, in his minute of the 25th of October, 1774, "that he remained at Delhi, the ancient capital of the empire, _a mere cipher_ in the administration of it") to maintain itself against common vicissitudes; that he would not have advised interference, if the king himself retained the exercise of it, _however feeble_, in his own hands; that, if it [the Mogul's authority] is suffered to receive its final extinction, it is impossible to foresee _what power may arise out of its ruins_, or what events may be linked in the same chain of revolution with it: but your interests _may_ suffer by it, your reputation _certainly will_, as his right to our assistance _has been constantly acknowledged_, and by a train of consequences to which our government has not intentionally given birth, but most especially by the movements which _its influence, by too near an approach_, has excited, it has unfortunately become the efficient instrument of a great portion of the king's present distresses and dangers,--intimating (as well as the studied obscurity of his expressions will permit anything to be discerned) that his own late intrigues had been among the causes of the distresses and dangers, which by new intrigues he did pretend to remove: and he did conclude this part of his letter with some loose general expressions of his caution not to affect the Company's interests or revenues by any measures he might at that time take. XIV. That the principle, so far as the same hath been directly avowed, of the said proceedings at the Mogul's court, was as altogether irrational, and the pretended object as impracticable, as the means taken in pursuit of it were fraudulent and dishonorable, namely, the restoration of the Mogul in some degree to the dignity of his situation, and to his free agency in the conduct of his affairs. For the said Hastings, at the very time in which he did with the greatest apparent earnestness urge the purpose which he pretended to have in view with regard to the dignity and liberty of the Mogul emperor, did represent him as a person wholly disqualified, and even indisposed, to take any active part whatsoever in the conduct of his own affairs, and that any attempt for that purpose would be utterly impracticable; and this he hath stated to the Court of Directors as a matter of public notoriety, in his said letter of the 16th of June, 1784, in the following emphatical and decisive terms.